Pipe fabrication for wave tanks at Imperial College London

Site Service Engineering has undertaken important work on the wave machine tanks used for groundbreaking research at Imperial College London.

The Hydrodynamics Laboratory at Imperial College is equipped with the facilities to measure waves and their impact. This includes a number of wave flumes for 2D experiments, and a directional wave basin for experiments in 3D environments.

The Laboratory is one of the best facilities of its kind, with a reputation for excellence in the area of fluid mechanics, offering civil and environmental engineering applications.

It is particularly notable for its ocean basin, which is the largest research-only facility in the UK, measuring 20m by 12m.

In this phase of the project, we have changed the feed pipework to the wave tanks, which are used for calculating stresses on ships and rigs. They have model ships which are used to simulate these effects.

The water for the wave machine is stored on the fifth floor of the Civil Engineering Building, where the Hydrodynamics Laboratory is situated, and it is fed by two submersible pumps from the tank sumps.

We fabricated and changed approximately 60 metres of 10’’ stainless steel pipe from the original carbon steel pipe.

This stage of the project was a huge success and we may be asked to change the feeds to the fifth floor in the future.